Advent Music

I see music as a tremendous gift.  I love making it, listening to it, talking about it.  Recently, I told a friend that if joy were the sun inside me (cheese alert), it goes solar-flare crazy, shooting out of every part of me when I'm singing and thinking of nothing else.  I geek out about music.  Since I also geek out about Christmas, music having to do with the Advent season tends to be among the top-rated of my list of personal favorites.  I subscribe to the rule that says to only listen to Christmas music during the Christmas season.  The Christmas season for me officially begins the day after Thanksgiving and ends... eh, sometime after December 25 and before I go back to work in January (the end date is, um, flexible).  Since I only give myself about a month each year to listen to some of my favorite tunes, I ONLY listen to those songs.  It's a little neurotic, but it works for me.  Among my top 15 Advent songs this year (and since last year, when I first heard it) is Hillsong's "Emmanuel", from their 2011 Christmas album Born Is the King.  Here it is:

The name Emmanuel translates to "God with us".  If you read my last post, I think it'll make sense to you that this is my favorite name for God/Jesus.  God's "with us"ness is the part of who he is that blows my mind the most.  It's the part I love talking about the most.  His awesomeness and infinity give me psychological vertigo, but those serve to make the fact that he is with us that much more heartrending - in the best way - to me.  This song, I think, paints a beautiful picture with its music as well as its lyrics.  As I listen and sing the lyrics as if they actually originate from me, I see myself in old Bethlehem, finding my way to that stable where Mary bore Jesus, in awe of the juxtaposition of the humbleness of the scene with my knowledge that I'm witnessing Divinity in flesh.  Then I'm just overcome by it all.  My shepherd-king, you're watching over me.  Emmanuel.  The song moves on through verses and choruses to a simple bridge that repeats the words "Holy, holy, God almighty - there is none like you," and I'm really moved by this point.  There is none like you... no one, no one.  Then the music surges and the strings carry me away and threaten to bring me to tears (onions... onions everywhere...).  At the end of it all, the music quiets once again, and I'm mercifully laid back down beside the manger-turned-crib, brought back to the ground to look at this thing God has done, and to cling to it.

So amazing... You have named the stars of the deepest night.  Still you love me... You have called my name.  I will follow you...